A Rose By Any Name...

I call this rose "Sweet Mystery", and the title suits it wonderfully. Beyond knowing that it is an antique and a true old garden rose, I have no idea what my splendid "once blooming" beauty is called - I suspect it may be a Great Maiden's Blush.

Whatever my mystery rose is, it has all the characteristics and habits of a vigorous old Alba (most ancient of roses except for the glorious Gallicas). The word Alba springs from a Proto-Indo-European root albh, meaning white. The deliciously fragrant white (or pale pink) Alba roses were plentiful in Britain long before the Romans arrived, and when the first of Caesar's legions arrived in Britain, they named the island Albion for the roses which were already there, blooming in clouds of perfume and wild abundance. The ancient Romans were rose lovers themselves - they imported masses of roses from Egypt, and wherever the legions alighted in their westward travels, they brought roses with them to grace the courtyards of their fortresses and camps.

It should be noted, that as passionate as I am about roses, I cannot claim to be a rose gardener. I live too far north for that, and for a variety of reasons (mostly the length of our winters and our summer humidity), modern roses do not do well in the garden behind the little blue house in the village. Nevertheless, for a few weeks in late June and early July, I permit myself to wander about in the garden like a pre-Raphaelite maiden (better make that pre-Raphaelite crone or hag) smelling the roses and dreaming. This rose is always my first stopping place.

Budding After Rain (II)

This is an Abraham Darby rosebud unfolding, and the photo, taken on a gray day after a night full of rain, does neither the rose nor its leaves any justice.

Abraham Darby was one of the first David Austin roses, one of the loveliest and most fragrant. It is the result of a cross of two modern roses, Aloha, a truly sumptuous climber, and Yellow Cushion, a particularly lush floribunda. In moderate climes, the rose has an overall apricot appearance with hints of pink, but this far north, the bloom is a delicate pink on the fringes of its petals, shading toward apricot and gold at its heart. The perfume is deliciously heady, a true old world rose fragrance with hints of fruit and spice - I so wish I could share the fragrance with you this morning.

This year's addition to the garden will be another David Austin rose, Crown Princess Margareta (Auswinter), but really, there are a number of magnificent creatures crying out to be added to the rose garden behind the little blue house in the village. So many exquisite roses - only a small garden in which to plant them and a single lifetime in which to befriend them...

The Music of a Summer Night

The music of a summer day varies, Bach, Scarlatti (Spencer's favorite), Dylan, Robbie Robertson and the Band, Jessie Cook, the happy sparkling confections of a whole stack of Putumayo recordings.

Summer nights hold other melodious magics, and sometimes, they make me wake up smiling - in the midst of the heated summer rains this week, an old dream has returned. I am playing the Dvorak cello concerto on my Strad at Carnegie Hall. Because of the heat, I am in cutoffs and a sleeveless "T", and I am performing barefoot.

The dream gave me back a lovely long forgotten memory - Simon Rattle performing in the old tithe barn at Charleston Manor many years ago. On that steamy summer night he was wearing tie and tails, but he wore no shoes. The music was (I think) the overture and incidental music from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Felix Mendelssohn.

My dream performance this week was flawless, and the ovation afterward lasted for some time.

Rose After Rain

David Austin Rose
Heritage (Ausblush)

Friday Ramble - A Wild Patience

As I started off on the Friday ramble this week, the word that came to mind was patience, although I have already written a ramble with that word.

Patient is what I am trying to be at present, as I lurch and totter and scramble my way through a whole series of medical diagnostic procedures - some are invasive and uncomfortable, others are no problem at all. Off I go from one doctor to another, clinic to laboratory to hospital, then back again. Patience, I say to myself over and over, patience, patience, patience...

The tests will not all be completed until late July, and there is nothing I can do until then except breathe in and out, cultivate patience and forbearance, think positive thoughts and wait for my results. I can't permit myself to be undone by fear and anxiety, and I try to remember that, but there are times now and then when I freeze up entirely and wonder if I am about to go as mad as a hatter. Then the dark clouds roll by and my fearful moment passes - I pick up my camera or paint brush, make a pot of tea, go for a walk with Spencer, curl up in my favorite Morris chair with a good book.

For some reason, the elegant keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (Mikhail Pletnev's recording) and the Bach preludes (Glenn Gould) put everything back into place now, and so does the magnificent voice of Dechen Shak-Dagsay, particularly her soaring sung rendition of the Om mantra.

Whenever I can, I head for the woods, watch the sun rise over the lake or go down in flames at the end of the day, watch cattails sway along the shore and listen to the wind in the trees above the gorge. Last evening, I watched a radiant crescent of waxing moon dance aloft in the western sky just after sunset. Sometimes, I lean against an old rail fence and watch dragonflies zooming around the hill like ecstatic whirling dervishes. Whether or not I can muster any energy when I am out in my favorite wild places, I am most comfortable there, peaceful and completely at home.

Patience/patient has its roots in the Middle English pacient, the Middle French patient and the Latin word pati, all meaning to undergo something, to suffer through, get through, or put up with something and do it with grace and dignity - no whining, screaming or going completely off one's nut. Patience is a good word for someone aspiring to authenticity or enlightenment, but it is not for wimps and sissies, and it is anything but limp and docile. I am learning that it is a truly wild and fierce emotion.

Thursday Poem - Thirty Words

Knowing, not owning.
Praise of what is,
not of what flatters us
into mere pleasure.
Earth speaking earth,
singing water and air,
audible everywhere
there is no one to listen.

Robert Bringhurst
(from Pieces of Map, Pieces of Music)

Wordless Wednesday - The Morning Visitor

Adolescent Common Grackle
(Quiscalus quiscula)

Thoughts Among the Orchids

One logs in here every morning with coffee in hand and writes a little something about her early thoughts of the day, and sometimes, she wonders what this place is all about, what the point of it is - she wonders if this is not just an exercise in self-indulgence and futility, a jagged heap of shored fragments with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

There are reminders here about what matters (or ought to matter), sticky notes, exhortations to myself and pep talks, odd bits of grumbling and peevishness about life's potholes, large and small, an occasional sharp tap on the ear and terse suggestion to get my act together and stop whining. I know for sure that there are a lot of bad photos along with my stray thoughts and random potterings - perhaps something a tad more thoughtful and profound a few times a year, but then again, perhaps not.

Is that all there is to this place? Sometimes it seems so, and I was seriously considering writing something longer here this week and then being away for a while, but as I sat among the orchids at the bottom of a dank sunny Lanark bog this past weekend, all my odd cronish notions, aches and nausea and grumpy bits went sailing off into the sunlight like cavorting motes of leaf dust.

One simply cannot be snarly or morose in the presence of wild orchids. There is mindfulness and rapt attention in their perfect nodding velvet heads, elegance in every stem and leaf. They haven't a care in the world, blooming gloriously (and for the most part unseen) for a few days in late June, then fading into the shadows and waiting patiently for the wheel to turn again, for their blooming time to come again.

Looking at it another way, it seems to me that what I am doing here is scratching out the text of my life on the wall of this cavern (or rather bog) with an antler. Whether or not this badly told story of mine belongs to the shared patterns of the great, true stories—the myths— it is how I am journeying along this trail, how I am finding out my relation to the sacred, to others, the great wide world and the self (to paraphrase Linda Sexson and one of my favorite books, Ordinarily Sacred).

This is my song - the orchids told me so.

Viceroy

Viceroy Butterfly
(Limenitis archippus)

She was discovered clinging to a wildly blowing blade of grass in the high wind at the bottom of the orchid bog yesterday afternoon. Lovely delicate creatures and wonderfully marked...

In the Community of Orchids (for Litha)

Showy Lady's Slipper
(Cypripedium reginae)

Can it be here already, the longest day of the year? Obviously so, since I spent yesterday pottering about in the bottom of a deep bog in Lanark and marveling (as I always do at summer solstice time) at the colony of native orchids blooming there.

This rare wild terrestrial orchid of the highlands blooms gloriously in a hidden corner of the Two Hundred Acre Wood, and we guard the knowledge of its residence jealously - only a handful of close companions know where it sends roots deep into the fertile muck, puts up spiraling brilliant green leaves and blooms gloriously for a few days in late June.

It seems that summer has only just arrived here, and we are already on our way to shorter days and longer nights. Let us enjoy these golden days and starry velvet summer nights.

Happy Litha to each and every one of you, Happy Summer Solstice!

Blooming

One of those little "aha" moments which add a soupçon of pleasure and quiet thought to a crone's wandering days....

All through the year, I try to avoid approaching the wicked blackberry bushes in one corner of the garden behind the little blue house in the village. To approach them, even in the most humble and congenial frame of mind, is to risk being torn to shreds by the wicked thorns on their long gracefully arching canes. For a week or two at the end of June, there are berries, magnificent, fat, juicy berries (think preserves, dessert sauces and sorbet), and we take our chances. For the rest of the calendar year, we try to remember that the blackberry bushes take their role as silent assassins very seriously indeed, and we give them a wide berth whenever possible.

There have been many times when I pondered just taking a machete to the northwest corner of the garden. Then I think about the time when a burglar climbed over the fence in the wee hours of the morning and landed right in the middle of the blackberry canes. Needless to say or write, his night's work proceeded no further. Never mess with a mature blackberry bush on guard duty, particularly a wild one with attitude.

I've been passing by the blackberry corner of the garden (mostly at a distance) for time out of mind, and until a few days ago, I never noticed how lovely the red fringed blossoms are. Shame on me.

Friday Ramble - Serendipity

We use the word serendipity to describe a situation in which one discovers something wonderful by accident - usually when one is in search of something else entirely. In other words, serendipity means stumbling upon wonders when we are least expecting them, perhaps even tripping over them before realizing that we have been gifted with something astonishing.

Serendip is an old name for Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) taken from the Arabic Sarandib, thence from the Sanskrit Simhaladvipa meaning, "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island. That tells us that the origins of serendipity may go back a very long way indeed, for the only lion native to the island is generally thought to have become extinct before modern man arrived.

The word has been around since 1754 when Horace Walpole used it in a letter to a friend, saying that he derived it from an old Persian fairytale called "The Three Princes of Serendip". The three gentlemen of the tale were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." When using the word, we tend to forget that Walpole was making an important point, that a subtle wisdom is often at work in serendipitous situations, an ability to establish relationships between ostensibly irrelevant facts and come to important conclusions from them.

My wee frog sitting blithely on his (or her) lily pad in a pond along the Rosetta road in Lanark was a truly serendipity finding and a potent reminder. So small that it was not visible to the naked eye from a distance, it was not until I returned home and uploaded the day's images into the computer that I was able to see and marvel at something green and wonderful, but no larger than my thumbnail. Wonders are all around us - we have only to look.

Thursday Poem - Sweetness

at dawn, a frail moon waning in the high
still light of morning, blesses this perfect
summer day, one that will never come again
in all its sweetness and its verdant spice,

and slow walkers in the early fog, we go paw
and paw through fragrant summer yieldings
of swaying purple clover and rhyming cricket,
of humming bee and dancing leaf

while all around us, unseen but deeply
felt and loved, this world is breathing
in and out, our three voices falling
into seamless light and tune and time.

how sweet this world, these earthly
days, how very very sweet...

Catherine Kerr (kerrdelune)

Wordless Wednesday - Quiet River

Turtle Crossing

Midland Painted Turtle
(Chrysemys picta marginata)

This is Spencer's first summer of running free on the Two Hundred Acre Wood, and as such, the experience is bringing me back to early rambles with my darling departed Cassie. There will never come a day when I don't think of her and sometimes shed a few tears - she was an amazing companion, and I shall miss her all the days of my life.

When Cassie came to us as a battered and emaciated rescue many years ago, she had the same boundless curiosity, enthusiasm and joie de vivre that Spencer has now, and it is marvelous to be seeing the world again through such spirited, adventurous and loving eyes.

I have been studying dragonflies for years, but it appears that this summer's study of the winged beauties will be held in abeyance for a while. Spencer wants to help me do everything, and his assistance consists of dancing through the shrubbery and dislodging whichever dragonfly has consented to pose for the camera and be interviewed for my field notebook.

Turtles are something else again - they just tuck their heads into their shells and wait for the adventurous canine to go away and leave them to their own rambles. This puzzles my furry son, and he doesn't know quite what to make of it.

Mariposa (Butterfly Woman)

Female Canadian Tiger Swallowtail
(Papilio Canadensis)

This spectacular (and somewhat tattered) female was fluttering in a sunny grove of blackberry canes by the main trail through the deep woods yesterday morning. I sat down on a fallen log to watch as she foraged among the downy blackberry blossoms for nourishment, and I was there for some time - until she flew off into the aspen grove further up the hill.

It is a fine old life that permits one to sit on a log in the forest for an hour or so and watch swallowtails dance in early summer. They are magnificent creatures, and the experience was something to remember - the butterfly's spiraling bacchanal through the grove, the jeweled golds and blues and reds of her wings and how beautifully the sun was shining through them.

Although science generally "pooh poohs" the notion that insects feel emotions as humans do, there seemed to be genuine pleasure in Mariposa's swooping flight yesterday, and I would like to think that it was so.

If precious stones had the gift of flight, they would resemble swallowtail butterflies, but the swallowtails would shine more brightly every time.

Romping Among the Lupins

Friday Ramble - Romp

This week, Friday's ramble is without words for the most part. I am making ready for a craft show and photo exhibition over the weekend, and the little blue house in the village has piles of "stuff"everywhere - prints large and small, greeting cards, brochures, business cards, postcards and, of course, my portfolio. I am ready to go for the most part, but ideas continue to pop out of the ether, and I am always thinking of other things which could be added to the brew.

Spencer and I took our early walk as usual though, and this morning, the village common was full of cottontails gamboling, cavorting and merrily partaking of the first blooming purple clover of the season - the lovely fragrant stuff is blooming in abundance now.

The word for the week, had I time to write about it, would probably be "romp" which comes to us through the Middle English rampen and the Old French ramper, both originating in an old Germanic word meaning to rise or climb. The cottontails do it (romp, that is) with perfect aplomb.

Thursday Poem - Generations

Our stories lie down in the orchard,

their time is not now, but something is

coming, something is going away. They

rise to the stars, and wait to be told.

There are listeners who know how little

we know, how much we are feeling.

We had to go our own way, a little off course,

always, no matter how specific the directions

seemed at the time. In this universe if we’re lucky,

we will live in our children’s stories,

their tales that will turn us to legend,

some absurd truth that has nothing to do

with our plans, our meticulous records.

No matter what stories we discard or keep,

they will give us a life we cannot imagine.

Jeanne Lohmann

from The Light of Invisible Bodies

Wordless Wednesday - After the Rain

Rain on the Edge of Wonder

I awakened this morning to the sound of rain through the open window and to thoughts fluid, serene and floating rather than the perambulations of a sleepy mind and a creaking cron-ish metabolism. A good rain always seems to energize this old hen, and I was happy about this one.

What does one do on such a day? Pots of tea, paintbrushes and canvas, art and photography books, a little music - these are the gentle mandates of a rainy day. I pick up my tea bowl, and the perfume brings to mind the fragrance of the first white water lilies of the season, the raindrops beyond my window weaving themselves seamlessly into the gorgeous voice of Jennifer Berezan on "She Carries Me". I could use a few more days like this one, and for many reasons, but the main one is the simple peace of such a day.

If only my ancient oilskins and hip waders were without holes.... I would be up to my butt in a beaver pond somewhere today, as happy as a freshwater clam, a frog, a heron or a glossy mallard duck.

The Rose Moon of June

It is the quintessential northern summer moon, this magnificent glowing creature rising out of the warm June night over a meandering river in the Lanark highlands. I always feel that this moon craves a rite of some kind, a bow, a benediction, a song of praise.

Litha is not far off now, and there is a touch of pathos, a sense of things moving onward and away, always in a fluid cosmic spiral. When the full moon of July makes its appearance, those of us who live in the northern hemisphere will have begun our slow honeyed inexorable descent toward the time of long nights, cold short days, rest and introspection.

When it is summer here, it is winter somewhere else - I was reminded wonderfully of the boundless cosmic spiral this morning by Tom Raven, who shared his own magnificent moon. New Zealand is in the midst of winter, and Tom's beautiful moon rising over Paekakariki Hill and Pukerua Bay is the "Moon of Long Nights".

We also know this magnificent summer moon as the: Bass Moon, Big Mouth Moon, Big Summer Moon, Blackberry Moon, Brachmon, Bulbs Mature Moon, Centek Moon, Columbine Moon, Corn Tassels Appear Moon, Dancing Moon, Duckling Moon, Dyan Moon, Egg Hatching Moon, Egg Laying Moon, Egg Moon, Eucalyptus Moon, Fatness Moon, Fish Spoils Easily Moon, Fishing Moon, Flowering Cherry Moon, Full Leaf Moon, Gardening Moon, Green Corn Moon, Harvest Moon , Hoeing Moon, Honey Moon, Hot Moon, Lady Slipper Moon, Leaf Dark Moon, Litha Moon, Lotus Moon , Lovers' Moon, Making Fat Moon, Mead Moon, Middle of Summer Moon, Midsummer Brightness Moon, Midsummer Moon, Moon of Horses, Moon of Little Fawns, Moon of Making Fat, Moon of Planting, Moon of the Turtle, Moon When Green Grass Is Up, Moon When June Berries Are Ripe, Moon When the Buffalo Bulls Hunt the Cows, Moon When the Hot Weather Begins, Moon When the Leaves Are Dark Green, Moon When the Moon Leaves Come out, Moon When They Hill Indian Corn, Oak Moon, Peony Moon, Planting Moon, Pomegranate Moon, Raspberry Moon, Ripening Moon, Ripening Time Moon, Semivisonna Moon, Sixth Moon, Sockeye Moon, Solstice Moon, Strawberry Moon, Strong Sun Moon, Summer Moon, Sun High Moon, Thumb Moon, Turning Moon, Watermelon Moon, Windy Moon

By the Clyde

Progeny

The Friday Ramble - Bereft

The word bereft is an old one, the past participle of the verb bereave, and it comes to us through the Middle English bereven, the Old English berēafian, the Dutch berooven and the Germanic berauben, all probably originating in the Gothic biraubō, meaning to be deprived of something and to feel the loss keenly.

For the past week or three, the main activity here has been watching a pair of house finches build a nest in the oak wreath on the door of the little blue house in the village and raise a family there. Working together, the pair constructed an artful nursery, and when all was ready, the female deposited three pale blue eggs in the nest. Within a week or two, the eggs had hatched out, and there were three speckled children watching the great wide world unfold from their twiggy home and clamoring for food whenever their doting parents arrived.

Yesterday, the brood spread their wings for the first time, and as the proud but weary parents sat nearby in the crabapple tree, the two older fledglings took flight and fluttered around the front garden triumphantly. The third child was in no hurry to depart and sat comfortably in the nest for a few hours longer as the parents perched on the wreath by turns, feeding it and cheering it on to greater things. Their exhortations were wonderful to hear from the open window here in the study. An hour or so before sunset the third child departed the nest on steady wings, and for the first time in weeks, there was silence on our threshold.

It is the "empty nest" thing - I was as proud as the parents were yesterday, but sad to see the little finches leave, and the right word for the feeling is bereft. It should noted, however, that my wreath is a total write off.

Thursday Poem - The Greatest Grandeur

Some say it's in the reptilian dance
of the purple-tongued sand goanna,
for there the magnificent translation
of tenacity into bone and grace occurs.

And some declare it to be an expansive
desert-solid rust-orange rock
like dusk captured on earth in stone-
simply for the perfect contrast it provides
to the blue-grey ridge of rain
in the distant hills.

Some claim the harmonics of shifting
electron rings to be most rare and some
the complex motion of seven sandpipers
bisecting the arcs and pitches
of come and retreat over the mounting
hayfield.

Others, for grandeur, choose the terror
of lightning peals on prairies or the tall
collapsing cathedrals of stormy seas,
because there they feel dwarfed
and appropriately helpless; others select
the serenity of that ceiling/cellar
of stars they see at night on placid lakes,
because there they feel assured
and universally magnanimous.

But it is the dark emptiness contained
in every next moment that seems to me
the most singularly glorious gift,
that void which one is free to fill
with processions of men bearing burning
cedar knots or with parades of blue horses,
belled and ribboned and stepping sideways,
with tumbling white-faced mimes or companies
of black-robed choristers; to fill simply
with hammered silver teapots or kiln-dried
crockery, tangerine and almond custards,
polonaises, polkas, whittling sticks, wailing
walls; that space large enough to hold all
invented blasphemies and pieties, 10,000
definitions of god and more, never fully
filled, never.

Pattiann Rogers,
from Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems

Wordless Wednesday - Iris

Purple Wonder

Knapweed
also called Starthistle, Loggerhead or Bluet
(Centaurea spp)

In this unseasonal northern coolness and precipitation, the wonder of the wild garden week has to be my knapweed, which persists in blooming gloriously in spite of the inclement weather at present.

The cool green foliage and vibrant lavender petals and the artfully sculptured bracts are a balm to the eyes on a wet grey day, and the feathery flower heads like mandalas are artful constructions indeed.

Spencer has a routine appointment this morning with his veterinarian, Dr. Sue, and on the way back from the North Lanark Veterinary Clinic, I shall climb down into the orchid bog, visit the pink lady slipper colony and try to determine just how far behind its blooming will be this year. I am almost afraid to look...

Nested

Greening, wildflowers and foliage, nesting birds and eggs everywhere...... I go about with notebook in pocket and camera slung around my neck, and the question is always the same at this time of year. Do I barge in and snap a photo of the nesting birds I meet in my potterings? So far, I have resisted the impulse, thinking that to disturb the nesting mothers would be rude. Were I in one of their places, I would be terrified by the sight of a large, clumsy and unthinking human blundering into my nursery or sanctuary and taking photos of my children-to-be. I do (however) take pictures of the nests when the parents are away feeding.

On the way up the trail yesterday in a high wind, under cloudy skies and just after torrential rain, sleet and hail, I almost stepped on a ruffed grouse sitting quietly on her nest of nine creamy eggs in a stand of spiky scouring rushes and enfolded in deep leafy shadow. She was so perfectly camouflaged that I only noticed her when she looked up at me with a beady black eye, stirred and made a soft "pprrrrrpp" sound.

A few feet further along, a hermit thrush had made her nest In a wicked clump of junipers near one of the wild orchid colonies, and there were two tiny bright blue eggs in it - later there were three.

As I turned back toward the car later, I noticed a single yellow warbler's egg resting in a heap of soggy mucilaginous leaves, right in the middle of the path. It had probably been blown there by the high winds which were blowing the trees along the trail almost sideways yesterday.

Closer to home, the house finches who have crafted their nest in the oak wreath on door of the little blue house in the village are busy feeding their brood these days - it will only be a week or so until the wee ones are fully fledged and ready to fly. For only a moment now and again, the wonderfully rosy male finch perches on top of the wreath, and we can see him through the Georgian fanlight window in the door. After weeks of song and cheerful "comings and goings" on our threshold, we are not looking forward to an empty nest and an untenanted wreath.